Cuba has come up with 5 Covid vaccine candidates


A Cuban industrial complex prepares to start production of one of the country's newly developed COVID vaccines.
CREDIT: YANDER ZAMORA/POOL/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES


BY Jason Beaubien
FEB 01, 2022 

 NPR

In the early days of the Covid pandemic, Cuba decided it was going to make its own vaccine – even though vaccine development historically takes years, even decades, to bear fruit.

Why did the Communist island nation decide to go it alone?

It didn't want to rely on the whims of foreign governments or international pharmaceutical companies to immunize its people. Cuba didn't even sign up for the COVAX program, backed by the World Health Organization, that was promising to purchase vaccines in bulk and distribute them equitably around the globe.

Cuba was taking a gamble that it could develop a vaccine before the coronavirus swept across on the island.

"I don't like the word 'gamble'," says Cuban virologist Amilcar Pérez Riverol about his nation's strategy. "I prefer the word 'risky'."

Pérez Riverol left Cuba in 2013 and now works as researcher at the São Paulo Research Foundation at São Paulo State University in Brazil. But he writes regularly about the Covid situation in Cuba on his Facebook page and elsewhere. He used to work in the labs in Havana that were tasked with developing Cuba's home-grown vaccines.

And he was confident that Cuban scientists could win this race against the virus. "I was there, I worked there. I know the people who work there, the spirit they have, the institution they have," he says. It was a huge project, but when they launched it, he says he thought, "Yeah, they can do that."

Cuba's vaccine development effort wasn't just risky from health perspective. Politically if the rest of the world got vaccine far earlier than Cuba, it would be a huge blow to the government. Pérez Riverol says getting a Cuban-made vaccine became an all-consuming project for the country.

"It became the top priority for the whole country, not only for the scientific community or the health authorities," he says. "But also from the political point of view the message was 'get this done.' Because it was the only opportunity to get people vaccinated."

Cuba now has five vaccines in various stages.

Three of the vaccines, Soberana 1, Soberana 2 and Soberna Plus, were developed at the Finlay Institute in Havana. The other two, Abdala and Mambisa, came out of Cuba's Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology. Soberana 2, Soberana Plus and Abdala are authorized by the Cuban authorities for use and export while the other two (one of which is a nasal spray) are still in clinical trials. None of them have yet been authorized by the World Health Organization or any other major international regulator

But they've allowed Cuba to boast one of the highest Covidvaccination rates in the world. More than 85% of the island nation is fully immunized against the virus — a far higher vaccination rate than the U.S. It even tops every country in Europe except Portugal. The country is even giving the shots to kid as young as 2 years old.

At a time when many other low- and middle-income nations continue to struggle to get enough doses, Cuba is exporting vaccine to Iran, Venezuela, Mexico, Nicaragua and Vietnam.

Pérez Riverol says Cuba was able to pull off this pharmaceutical feat for a number of reasons.

First, Cuba already had a robust vaccine manufacturing sector. The country of 11 million people produces most of its own inoculations for its routine childhood immunization program, targeting diseases such as yellow fever, whooping cough, diphtheria, tetanus.

"They have the whole infrastructure, you know," Pérez Riverol says. "They've been working on vaccines for more than 30 years."

And second, they didn't attempt to re-invent the wheel. They took existing vaccines for other diseases and tweaked them by adding a portion of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

All the Covid vaccines developed in Cuba are what are known as protein subunit conjugate vaccines.

"This is a technology that we've had around for a while," says Amira Roess, a professor of global health and epidemiology at George Mason University and a non-resident scholar at the Middle East Institute.

This type of vaccine, Roess says, "is something that a lot of companies and a lot of countries have tons of experience with." These vaccines are like the sturdy 1950's Ford Fairlane coupes that still chug through Havana's streets. By comparison, the flashy new mRNA Covid vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna would be high-tech Teslas.

Roess says it makes sense that Cuba used this old-school vaccine platform to build its Covid shots.

The Abdala vaccine – named after a dramatic poem by José Martí, the 19th Century activist for Cuban independence from Spain – was developed by the Center for Genetically Engineered Biotechnology and is based on the same technology the center uses in its hepatitis B vaccine, says Pérez Riverol.

The vaccine called Soberana 2 – or Sovereign 2 — is based on an existing influenza vaccine produced by the Finlay Institute.

"So actually, all these [Cuban Covid] vaccines have like an older cousin or an older brother," says Pérez Riverol.

Data released by the Cuban government in October of 2021 prior to the omicron surge showed the vaccines developed in Havana to be up to 92% effective against SARS-CoV2.

Cuba's success in developing Covid vaccine at a pace on par with some of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies may seem surprising. The country has been in economic and social turmoil. It's been facing shortages of food, fuel and foreign currency, that sparked major street protests last summer. Pandemic lockdowns further battered the economy, depriving the country of one of it's largest sources of revenue- tourism. U.S. President Trump in his final days in office, ramped up sanctions against the communist island, making it even harder for Cuba to import raw materials and pharmaceutical manufacturing equipment.

But William LeoGrande, a professor of government at American University in Washington, D.C. who's written extensively about Cuba, wasn't surprised that Cuba's bet on a domestic vaccine paid off. LeoGrande says many people in the U.S. often underestimate the sophistication of the Cuban biotech industry.

"The reason is because there are large sectors of the Cuban economy that really don't work very well," he says. "And so the image that that creates here in the United States is that nothing works in Cuba. But the reality is that there are some sectors and biotechnology is one of them that work pretty well."

LeoGrande says Cuba's rapid development of five Covid vaccines was a major coup for the Caribbean nation.

"Cuba was able to vaccinate virtually the entire population without having to worry about access to foreign vaccines while most of the Third World is not yet vaccinated because the vaccines are all produced in the developed countries," he says. "And finally, Cuba may be able to generate some revenue by selling the vaccines to other developing countries at a time when it is really in desperate need of foreign exchange currency."

One potential stumbling block for exporting Cuban Covid vaccines is that hasn't made progress in getting regulatory authorization for the products from the WHO. Individual countries are still welcome to authorize the shots locally if they so wish but a stamp of approval from WHO or another major regulator would make it far easier for Cuba to export these medical products.

Cuba has submitted Soberana 1, Soberana 2, Soberana Plus and Abdala for Emergency Use Listing by the WHO but their application hasn't moved forward. Notes on the WHO's website tracking the status of vaccine applications says that the regulatory body is still "awaiting information on strategy and timelines for submission" regarding the communist nation's Covid vaccines.

Cuba ran clinical trials for its vaccines yet the data from those studies hasn't been published in peer-reviewed scientific journals.

Pérez Riverol says part of the problem is a culture in Cuba that publication for researchers isn't a priority.

"Because you don't get funding in Cuba for a published paper," he says. "The government gives you the funding. So it's different to what happened in the rest of the world."

He's confident the data will get published eventually, but he says it's been a question of priorities.

"Their priorities were to focus in working on the vaccine and get the clinical trials done" so that people could get immunized, he says. "Not to write a paper or get that paper published."

Even though Cuba didn't want to rely on other countries for vaccine, there was one moment during a terrible Delta surge in August 2021 when they brought in extra doses of Sinopharm from China.

But throughout the rest of the pandemic, they've done what so many other nations couldn't — controlled their own fate when it came to getting vaccines.

[Copyright 2022 NPR]

RED SCARE 2.0

Biden shows little desire to reverse Trump's Cuba policies

“They’ve continued the Trump policy without public debate, without 

evidence, and without the normal government processes of looking at the facts.”

BY REBECCA BEITSCH - 05/31/21 
THE HILL

The Biden administration’s first major move on Cuba is the strongest signal yet it has little appetite to reverse Trump-era policies toward the island nation.

The State Department this past week listed Cuba as among those “not cooperating fully with United States antiterrorism efforts,” renewing a determination first made in 2020.

For those in favor of normalizing U.S. ties with Cuba, the move was seen as a purely political decision, but one that suggests the Biden administration may continue with the hardline approach taken by former President Trump.

“It’s a political determination, and a signal they’re trying to give the right wing that they’re going to stick with the status quo,” said Fulton Armstrong, an American University professor and director of Inter-American Affairs at the National Security Council during the Clinton administration.

“These determinations are B-O-G-U-S,” he added, criticizing the State Department for offering little insight into what factored into its decision.

The determination was made under the Arms Export Control Act, which requires a report every May listing countries barred from defense exports and sales with the U.S. Obama had removed Cuba from the list in 2015.

But the statute is also one of the three laws weighed when adding countries to the state sponsors of terrorism list — something Trump added Cuba to in the final days of his presidency.

While the Biden team has pledged to review Trump’s state sponsor of terror listing, White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters in March that “a Cuba policy shift is not currently among President Biden’s top priorities.”

To Cubans, the latest determination looks like a continuation of the Trump era.

“The U.S. changed presidents, but it’s more of the same,” Alejandro Gil Fernández, Cuba’s deputy prime minister and top economic policy minister, wrote on Twitter.


The State Department said the decision was made after “a review of a country's overall level of cooperation in our efforts to fight terrorism, taking into account our counterterrorism objectives with that country, and a realistic assessment of its capabilities.”

Iran, North Korea, Syria and Venezuela are among the other countries on the list.

The decision earned praise from Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who has blasted Cuba for remaining close with Venezuela. He called the move “a positive step that follows four productive years of the Trump Administration’s efforts to end Havana’s destructive and destabilizing efforts.”

But others see little fodder for the determination beyond Cuba agreeing to let Colombian National Liberation Army members stay in the country after negotiations it hosted on behalf of the nation in 2018 fell apart, and the Colombian government refused safe passage for the group to return.

“It's hard to have cooperation on counterterrorism or anything else if you're not talking with one another,” Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) a longtime proponent of normalizing ties with Cuba, told The Hill, noting the limited diplomatic relations between the two countries.

“And it's hard to get cooperation when the United States has not moved forward with any kind of genuine reengagement with Cuba,” he added.

The hesitancy to do anything similar to the Obama-era thawing of Cuban relations follows significant losses for Democrats in Florida. Trump won the state in November, while Democrats also lost two South Florida districts in an election that underscored the party’s struggles to win over more Latino voters.

The designation is the latest move from an administration that has publicly sought to distance itself from the Obama administration — not its predecessor — when it comes to Cuba.

“Joe Biden is not Barack Obama on policy toward Cuba,” Juan Gonzalez, senior director for the Western Hemisphere at the National Security Council, told CNN en Español in April.

Geoff Thale, president of the Washington Office on Latin America, described Cuba and Venezuela as the center of the GOP’s successful messaging in Florida before they gained the two House seats in November, including the district encompassing Miami’s Little Havana neighborhood.

“It wasn't really saying, ‘You don't want to end the embargo on Cuba,’ it was a campaign that said ‘Democrats are all socialists and socialism will ruin your life.’ And is that a wild distortion of Democrats’ policies and the Democratic party? Yes, it is. But as a media hit it was fairly effective,” he said.

“The easy answer is to say, ‘We won't do anything about Cuba or Venezuela, and if we do, we’ll do it as quietly as possible,’ ” he said.

But Thale doesn’t think that’s the smart strategy.

“Say ‘We are making challenges in Cuba policy, and those changes actually benefit Cubans in America and their families in Cuba that will overtime lead to greater freedom in Cuba,’ ” he said.

“[Democrats] will probably get painted as socialists no matter what they do, so it seems to me they need to think smarter about what they can do on strategy,” he added.

But some see Biden’s approach toward Cuba as part of a broader strategy of taking a tough stance on other communist countries.

“They are returning to the Cold War with practically everyone — with Russia, with China, with Cuba — and I don’t know that that is very smart right now,” said Carlos Alzugaray, a former Cuban diplomat and ambassador.

“But he won’t admit the Obama option is the only option. Because what other option is there? Continue pressuring the government of Cuba? First, that doesn't get done what you think it gets done,” he said, arguing that Cubans are not going to overthrow their government because of the U.S. embargo, which has been in place in some form since 1958.

“But secondly, it makes the United States look bad. It makes the U.S. look mean and vindictive with a small neighbor.”

Still, not all proponents of normalizing ties are worried the carryover determination means the U.S. policy toward Cuba has been settled.

“I’m choosing to look at this as not that big of a deal,” McGovern said. “My understanding is there is a review going on in the administration of what our Cuba policy should be. And my hope is that if it is done objectively and rationally, he will conclude that we need to reengage.”

But Armstrong said the lack of an appetite to reverse even on the Arms Control Export Act list doesn’t signal an administration seriously considering sweeping change.

At the Cuba Communist Party’s eighth party congress in April, the nation for the first time established a government without a single Castro on its roster. Still, the theme was “continuidad,” a nod to continuity of its plans to slowly loosen the government’s grip on the economy as Raúl Castro stepped down from his post.

“There is more continuidad on Cuba policy in Washington than there is in Havana,” Armstrong said.

“They’ve continued the Trump policy without public debate, without evidence, and without the normal government processes of looking at the facts.”

Biden’s forgotten promise to Cuba

Top surprises from a trip to Cuba: Yahoo Finance’s Rick Newman

Rick Newman
·Senior Columnist
Wed, February 8, 2023

Camilo Condis is the type of scrappy entrepreneur Americans normally cheer. He’s the co-owner of a small electrical company in Havana, Cuba that used to piggyback on the robust tourist economy, but made a pivot when COVID hit and tourism dried up. Condis, 37, is now trying to capitalize on the green-energy revolution by installing solar panels in a region that desperately needs energy self-sufficiency.

The problem is, Condis gets tangled in American politics in nearly every facet of his business.

Sixty years of U.S. sanctions on Cuba have left the island with almost no domestic production, so Condis must import everything he needs to do business. U.S. sanctions make it impossible to buy on credit or pay for purchases through a bank account. He used to visit the United States regularly, buy what he needed in cash and bring it back on the plane. But tighter visa restrictions and other strictures imposed during the Trump administration largely closed that supply chain.

“The economy is very, very bad right now,” Condis says of conditions in Cuba. “Our first ask is to differentiate the private sector from the Cuban government. If they want to sanction the Cuban government, that’s fine, but don’t sanction the civil society in general. There have to be ways for U.S. government to say, 'The Cuban private sector not going to be a target.'”

Electrical contractor Camilo Condis in Havana. Photo: Camilo Condis

To many visitors to Cuba, an easing of U.S. sanctions seems logical and long overdue. Cuba is no longer a client state of the Soviet Union, which dissolved in 1991, or its Russian successor. It poses no unusual national security threat to the United States. In 2014, President Obama began a rapprochement meant to boost U.S. trade with Cuba and export American influence. It seemed to be working, with Cubans in exile flocking home to be part of the new Cuba. Yet President Trump shut that down and imposed new sanctions even tougher than those in place before.

As a presidential candidate, Joe Biden promised to “promptly reverse the failed Trump policies that have inflicted harm on the Cuban people and done nothing to advance democracy and human rights.” But Biden’s only moves so far have been a minor easing of travel restrictions and a few other modest changes. The toughest sanctions remain in place, one factor triggering the largest flood of Cuban migrants to the United States ever.

I visited Cuba in January as one of 20 Americans on a fact-finding trip sponsored by the Global Interdependence Center, a Philadelphia nonprofit focused on economic cooperation among nations. Shortages were apparent everywhere. Locals wait in long lines for food and gas. Public bathrooms lack tissue paper and toilet seats. Internet service works at dial-up speed, if it’s even available. Buildings routinely collapse from lack of maintenance. There was a common refrain in meetings with government officials, local businesspeople and community leaders: End the sanctions. Reduce our misery. Give us access to American stuff.

[See 7 surprises from a visit to Cuba]

“There is no animosity in Cuba toward the United States,” Carlos Fernández de Cossío, the deputy foreign minister, told our group. The most important thing the United States could do, he said, is reverse Trump’s 2021 decision to put Cuba on the list of countries supporting terrorism, along with Iran, Syria and North Korea. “The United States could do this and no American would feel any pain. Acting on this would have no cost within the U.S.”

This isn't a war zone. Its just urban decay in Havana. Photo: Rick Newman

American business groups want the same thing. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce supports “barrier-free economic and commercial partnership between the United States and Cuba,” so American businesses can freely export to the island. Trade economist Gary Hufbauer of the Peterson Institute for International Economics estimates that U.S. exports to Cuba, barely $300 million per year now, could surge to $8 billion under normalization and $13 billion if the United States ever inked a free-trade deal with the country. That’s in the range of U.S. trade with Vietnam or Peru. Cuba wouldn’t be a huge market, but it would be a target-rich environment for certain U.S. exporters, such as poultry and rice farmers, telecom gear makers, technology service firms, cruise lines, tourism operators and real-estate developers.

More trade would also Americanize a land still clinging to Marxist ideology, normalization advocates say. “The premise is that you kill them with kindness,” says Juan Cruz of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who worked on Cuba policy in the Obama and Trump White Houses. “Put so many things in place that you discredit their system. Inundate them with good shampoo, soft towels and rock music. History shows that when you open those kind of things, no system can hold back.”

So what’s the problem?

Strident opposition to normalization from some Cuban-Americans whose families fled the country when Fidel Castro seized power in 1959. Many of those refugees lost homes, land, bank deposits and the majority of their possessions, or have relatives who did, when Castro nationalized privately-owned assets. Some are now members of Congress, mainly from Florida, where the Cuban-American population totals more than 1 million. “They were born there and had to flee, or saw parents or grandparents who had to flee,” says JP Chavez, co-founder of the Miami public-affairs consultancy Vocero. “It leaves quite a scar on some of these folks.”

[Follow Rick Newman on Twitter, sign up for his newsletter or sound off.]

Obama felt strongly about opening up to Cuba and disregarded opposition from anti-Cuba hard-liners, including Dem. Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey and a conservative Cuban-American voting bloc in South Florida. Trump was happy to reverse many Obama policies, and hard-liners got his ear. The new Trump sanctions hit as COVID was wrecking Cuba’s tourism business. Cubans couldn’t even get ventilators from the United States to help treat COVID patients, a slight many Cubans still bitterly bring up.

A Che Guevera mural in a Cuban government building.

Cubans don't say this outright, but the need for relief is becoming acute. The Cuban economy is in miserable shape, with Cubans debating whether it’s worse now than during the desperate days known as the “special period” in the 1990s, after the Soviet Union collapsed and Cuba lost its powerful sponsor. The Cuban economy shrank by 11% in 2020 and has barely recovered since then. Venezuela is a key ally that supplies Cuba with oil and other goods, but Venezuela’s own economy is foundering and supplies to Cuba have dwindled.

Cuba clearly needs better friends. But to some extent, it torpedoes its own interests. On July 11, 2021, thousands of Cubans fed up with deprivation hit the streets in nationwide protests, which the communist government, led by President Miguel Díaz-Canel, suppressed with force. Authorities put more than 700 protesters in jail, including many who were demonstrating peacefully, according to human rights groups. The crackdown neatly aligned with the hard-liners’ claim of a cruel authoritarian regime undeserving of democratic outreach.

Yet there’s also a latent industriousness in Cuba that seems worthy of American support. The Cuban government has allowed people to start private businesses during the last several years, and there are now 6,000 such businesses, roughly three times the number of government-controlled firms. Owners are allowed to keep the profits, after paying taxes and fees.

But barriers to success swamp what American entrepreneurs might be used to. “Importing raw materials is the biggest barrier to making anything in Cuba,” one business owner told the GIC group. “At moments you just want to scream.” The lack of financing means Cuban importers have to pay for everything up front, with dollars or euros often exchanged for Cuban pesos on a vibrant black market that operates largely on Telegram.

Barriers to prosperity are sending many Cubans packing. Nearly 300,000 Cubans—about 2.5% of the population—have left the island during the last two years, seeking better opportunities elsewhere, mostly in the United States. Many are educated young people who see no outlet for their skills in Cuba. But some want to stay. “I’m still here because I want us to change, and I want to see it first-hand,” says Condis, the electrical contractor.

The migration surge could be an impetus for Biden to act. Some Cubans get visas to come to the States legally, but many fly to Central America and then trek to the southwest border, where Cubans are now the second-largest group of migrants by nationality, after Mexicans. Improving conditions in Cuba would persuade more Cubans to stay or return home. Biden has the executive authority to ease sanctions, as Obama did, without Congressional action.

Biden seems less interested in Cuba than Obama was, however, and there's political risk to following through on his campaign pledges. Menendez, the New Jersey Democratic senator and the son of Cuban immigrants, was a crucial Biden ally during the last two years, when Dems had just a one-vote majority in the Senate. Biden may have been unwilling to cross him, given the support he needed for big bills such as the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. That could change now that Republicans control the House and no Democratic legislation is likely to pass.

A portrait of Fidel Castro hangs beside a government health care facility in Havana. Photo: Rick Newman

Florida politics are another factor. Obama won Florida in 2008 and 2012, when Florida was considered a swing state a presidential candidate needed to take to win the election. Florida then went for Trump in 2016. Chavez, the Miami consultant, thinks Obama’s opening to Cuba two years earlier cost Democrats Hispanic support in Florida, and elsewhere. “We’ve seen a significant shift among Hispanic voters toward the Republican Party,” Chavez says. “One big reason is cozying up with socialist regimes. Folks down here in south Florida don’t like that. Republicans have been able to capitalize on this anti-socialism movement, and Cuba is the cornerstone of that.”

Biden flipped the script in 2020, winning the presidential election without Florida, which is now more of a red state than a swing state. So maybe he could antagonize Cuban-Americans in Florida without much political blowback. Yet he still faces a problem even Cubans recognize: While there’s organized opposition to normalizing relations, there’s no powerful advocate in favor. Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon plans to introduce a bill this year to end U.S. sanctions on Cuba. But he has floated that bill before, with Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and others blocking it.

Business lobbyists say they do expect Biden to roll out new efforts to ease up on Cuba, either this year or next. A White House spokesperson told Yahoo Finance, “We don’t have anything on this at this time.” Cuba, for its part, could entice Biden by offering concessions, such as the release of jailed protesters or other actions Biden could point to as a move toward democracy. But Cuba, 64 years after Castro's revolution, still rejects democracy.

Getting back together is hard to do.

Rick Newman is a senior columnist for Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Twitter at @rickjnewman

Seoul's Ties With Havana Seen as Setback for Pyongyang

February 20, 2024 8:38 PM
By Christy Lee

The new presidential office building in Seoul, South Korea, May 9, 2022. South Korea’s presidential office said that the country’s move to establish diplomatic relations with Cuba would deal a blow to the South’s rival, North Korea.

WASHINGTON —

Seoul's newly forged diplomatic ties with Havana are a diplomatic setback for North Korea, which views Cuba as a brother country, according to analysts.

North Korea has had diplomatic relations with Cuba since 1960, and Cuba maintains an embassy in Pyongyang.

South Korea did not have diplomatic ties with Cuba for 65 years, but the South Korean Foreign Ministry announced it agreed with Cuba to set up ambassador-level diplomatic relations between the two when their respective representatives to the United Nations met in New York on Feb. 14.

North Korea has not made a public statement about South Korea's diplomatic ties with Cuba.

"The establishment of full diplomatic relations between the ROK and Cuba is somewhat of a psychological and symbolic setback for the DPRK," said Evans Revere, a former State Department official with extensive experience negotiating with North Korea.

South Korea's official name is the Republic of Korea (ROK). North Korea is officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).

"Seoul's motivation was to regularize ties with a North Korean ally and achieve a diplomatic and political success in its ongoing competition with the DPRK," Revere said via email on Saturday.

"Cuba's motivation was to try to improve its stagnant economy and improve the lives of its people," added Revere, a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution's Center for East Asia Policy Studies.

Cuba

Terence Roehrig, professor of national security affairs and a Korea expert at the U.S. Naval War College, said via email on Monday that establishing ties with Cuba is "a political win for Seoul in its competition with the North."

He said that the two countries' economic relations will give Seoul expanded access to Cuba's mineral resources while Havana will obtain increased trade and investment from South Korea.

Robert Rapson, who served as charge d'affaires and deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Seoul from 2018 to 2021, said via email on Friday the Seoul-Havana ties probably do not cause Pyongyang "so much pain" diplomatically because it has strengthened ties with Russia and looks ahead to a possible meeting with Japan.

Although Seoul and Havana have engaged in cultural exchanges, the newly established ties will aid economic cooperation that will support South Korean companies' entry into the Cuban market, said the South Korean Foreign Ministry in a Feb. 14 statement.

South Korea imported more than $7 million worth of goods from Cuba while exporting $14 million in 2022, according to the Foreign Ministry.

Among items that South Korea imported in 2022, copper accounted for $3.28 million, chemical products $2.13 million, and tobacco products $1.03 million, according to UN COMTRADE database, cited by Trading Economics, which compiles economic databases, indicators and indexes for 196 countries.

The South Korean presidential office said Cuba could emerge as a new market if the bilateral economic ties develop and if the U.S. relaxes the trade embargo imposed on Cuba in 1962.

The U.S. severed its diplomatic relations with Cuba in 1961 after Fidel Castro came to power in 1959. Washington officially restored diplomatic ties with Havana in 2015, but some U.S. policies were reversed in 2017.

Revere said Washington has reacted in a "very low-key manner" because of the sensitivity of Cuba as a domestic political issue in the United States.

However, he continued, the U.S. is probably "quite pleased with ROK-Cuba normalization, especially since Washington has also been trying to improve ties with the island. Going forward, the U.S. and the ROK will need to ensure that they coordinate their respective approaches on Cuba."

South Korea has been working over the years to improve ties with the socialist country whose government bears more resemblance to North Korea's than its own. Havana's political power is wholly vested in its Cuban Communist Party, much like Pyongyang's ruling Workers' Party of Korea.

Seoul's "bold and smart decision" in establishing ties with Havana could expose the Cuban government and people to South Korea's liberal democracy, said Joseph DeTrani, the special envoy for Six Party denuclearization talks with North Korea during the George W. Bush administration.

"North Korea may feel threatened diplomatically by this move," DeTrani said via email on Friday.

The South Korean Foreign Ministry said several cultural exchanges and people-to-people contacts between the two countries have played a role in the normalization of the diplomatic relations.

Among them are a Cuban film festival held in Seoul in 2022 and South Korean movies featured at an international film festival in Havana in December.

The Foreign Ministry also said ArtCor, a fan club of approximately 10,000 members in Cuba devoted to Korean popular culture, contributed to the opening of the diplomatic ties.

Approximately 14,000 South Koreans visited Cuba prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, and about 1,100 ethnic South Koreans live in Cuba, according to the South Korean Foreign Ministry.

 

Esteban Lazo travels to Kenya in search 

for cooperation and clarification

Press release by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Cuba

Comrade Esteban Lazo Hernández, Speaker of the National People’s Power Assembly and President of the Council of State of Cuba has travelled to the Republic of Kenya as High Level Special Envoy in order to engage in urgent procedures with the top authorities of that country, searching for cooperation and clarification, in the light of the recent news published about the possible non-confirmed death of doctors Assel Herrera Correa and Landy Rodríguez Hernández, who were kidnapped in that country on April 12, 2019.

Soon after receiving the news, the Cuban government has given absolute priority to the procedures that, through different means and with several international actors, are being carried out in order to get more objective information about these events until exhausting all possibilities to confirm the situation facing our compatriots.

As part of those efforts, since Sunday, February 18, and in addition to the procedures and the communication with the government of Kenya, official contacts started to be established with the government of Somalia in search for more accurate information about the reported military operations.

According to several media that have quoted the statements made by the United States Africa Command, the action occurred in the evening of February 15, 2024, during a drone strike launched by the US armed forces in the town of Jilib in Somalia, where the kidnapped doctors were staying.  This information was ratified on February 19 by a spokeswoman for US Africa Command, as reported by CNN.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Cuba addressed the US government via diplomatic channels on Sunday, February 18, asking for further clarification, and is still awaiting a response.

So far there has not been a public declaration from the US government or its armed forces confirming the news in relation to the kidnapped Cuban cooperation workers or denying the reports that have been published. The circumstances and characteristics of the military operation confirmed by the spokeswoman of AFRICOM; whether it was justified, or was carried out with the required care to avoid collateral damages and protect innocent civilians, with due respect for international humanitarian law, are yet to be known.

This is an issue on which several international organizations have expressed grave concerns in the past.

(Cubaminrex)

Progressives Call on Biden to Lift U.S. Embargo on Cuba as Thousands Protest Critical Shortages

"The truth is that if one wanted to help Cuba, the first thing that should be done is to suspend the blockade of Cuba as the majority of countries in the world are asking," said Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.


In Minneapolis, Minnesota in March 2021, protesters demand that the Biden administration take immediate action to reverse the economic sanctions imposed by former President Donald Trump on Cuba. (Photo by: Michael Siluk/Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)


JULIA CONLEY

July 12, 2021

Progressives in the U.S. and around the world on Monday demanded the Biden administration lift the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba and hundreds of sanctions on the country after thousands of Cubans protested the country's economic crisis, which has been worsened by the Covid-19 pandemic.

The protests in Havana and several smaller cities and towns made headlines Sunday, with major international outlets reporting on Cubans taking to the streets to express outrage over food and medicine shortages.


"Biden’s Cuba policies, just like Trump’s, are causing misery and could lead to chaos, violence, mass migration. This must stop!" —Medea Benjamin, CODEPINK

Demonstrators chanted, "Enough!" and "Freedom!" while one person told the Associated Press, "We are fed up with the queues, the shortages."

As The Economist reported earlier this month, food exports from the U.S. to Cuba, which imports about 70% of its food and relies heavily goods exported from the U.S., recently reached their lowest level since 2002.

Last month, The Intercept reported that the decades-long U.S. trade embargo against Cuba as well as sanctions imposed by the Trump administration and kept in place by President Joe Biden has kept Cuba from accessing "critical foreign-made medical supplies to treat its own population" during the pandemic, even as Cuba sent more than 2,000 medical professionals to help fight the global crisis in other countries.

According to The Intercept, large shipments of ventilators, masks, and syringes have been unable to reach Cuba since the pandemic began due to companies' financial ties to the United States.

Days before leaving office, former President Donald Trump designated Cuba as one of four state sponsors of international terrorism, along with North Korea, Iran, and Syria. The Biden administration has not lifted the designation, which "restricts Cuba's access to international financing as its economy emerges from a massive recession, having slid 11 percent in 2020," The Intercept reported.

While much of the international reporting on Cuba's protests over the weekend focused on anti-government sentiment on the island, activists including Medea Benjamin of CODEPINK said the clear solution to Cubans' economic woes lies in U.S. government policy changes.

"Biden’s Cuba policies, just like Trump’s, are causing misery and could lead to chaos, violence, mass migration," said Benjamin. "This must stop!"

The Trump administration barred most travel from the U.S. to Cuba and banned people in the U.S. from sending remittances to their relatives in the island nation, cutting off a major source of income for many—a policy that has yet to be lifted by Biden.

Last month, the U.S. delegation to the United Nations General Assembly was joined only by Israel in voting against a resolution to condemn the six-decade trade embargo imposed by the U.S. on Cuba; 184 countries voted for the resolution, which has passed every year for nearly three decades.

"Biden hasn't shown himself to be any different from Trump," Cuban journalist Laura Prado told CBS News after the U.N. vote. "What's needed is action and deeds."

Biden's State Department released a statement Sunday expressing support for the Cubans who were protesting, framing the issue as promoting the "right to peaceful assembly to express concern about rising Covid cases/deaths and medicine shortages."

"The U.S. has had no problem starving Cuba with a decades-long embargo that the entire world (minus Israel) condemns," said Assal Rad, a senior research fellow at NIAC Action. "If we care about Cubans, lift the embargo."

Others, including Miami's Democratic Socialists of America chapter and Progressive International, echoed the calls made by Rad and Benjamin, with Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) tweeting about the issue on Monday.

"The truth is that if one wanted to help Cuba, the first thing that should be done is to suspend the blockade of Cuba as the majority of countries in the world are asking," Mexico's leftist president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, said Monday. "That would be a truly humanitarian gesture. No country in the world should be fenced in, blockaded."

David Adler, general coordinator for Progressive International, noted that the corporate U.S. media reported on Sunday's protests as though the embargo has little connection to Cubans' suffering. The blockade has barred U.S. trade with Cuba since 1962 and has cost the island an estimated $130 billion according to Cuban officials and the United Nations.

"So do reporters just not know that there's been a decades-long U.S.-led embargo targeting Cuba," asked Evan Greer, director of digital rights group Fight for the Future, "or they just don't think it's relevant to reporting on protests about food and medicine shortages?"
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UPDATED

U.N. votes to end US embargo on Cuba; US and Israel oppose

Reuters
Thu, November 2, 2023 

Bruno Rodriguez gives a news conference in Havana

HAVANA (Reuters) - The U.N. General Assembly called for the 31st time on the United States to end its decades-long trade embargo against Cuba as the communist-run island suffers its worst economic crisis in decades, with shortages of food, fuel and medicine.

The non-binding resolution was approved by 187 countries and opposed only by the United States and Israel, with Ukraine abstaining.

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez said in a speech before the assembly that the "blockade prevents Cuba from accessing food, medicines, and technological and medical equipment."

Havana is also prohibited from exporting to the neighboring United States, Rodriguez said, curtailing access to a massive market for its goods and costing Cuba nearly $5 billion in losses in 2022 alone.

"The blockade (embargo) qualifies as a crime of genocide," said Rodriguez, who said the U.S. policies were deliberately aimed at promoting suffering among the Cuban people in order to force change in the government.

The trade embargo was put in place following Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution and has remained largely unchanged, though some elements were stiffened by former President Donald Trump. The web of U.S. laws and regulations complicate financial transactions and the acquisition of goods and services by the Cuban government.

U.S. diplomat Paul Folmsbee, in a brief speech opposing the resolution, said the embargo was aimed at promoting "human rights and fundamental liberties in Cuba" and that the U.S. made exceptions for humanitarian purposes.

"The United States continues to be a significant source of humanitarian goods to the Cuban people and one of Cuba's main trading partners," the diplomat said.

He noted that the United States last year sold Cuba $295 million worth of agricultural products.

The long-running dispute between Cuba and the United States shows little sign of detente, despite some modest gestures of goodwill under the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden.

Biden has taken small steps to ease restrictions on Cuba, boosting consular services but doing little to repeal the Trump sanctions.

(Reporting by Nelson Acosta, editing by Dave Sherwood and Rosalba O'Brien)

UN votes overwhelmingly to condemn US economic embargo on Cuba for 31st year and urge its lifting

EDITH M. LEDERER
Updated Thu, November 2, 2023 

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The U.N. General Assembly voted overwhelmingly Thursday to condemn the American economic embargo of Cuba for a 31st year after its foreign minister urged, “Let Cuba live without the blockade!”

The vote on the resolution in the 193-member General Assembly tied the record for support for the Caribbean island nation: The vote was 187 in favor, with the United States and Israel opposed, and Ukraine abstaining. Somalia, Venezuela and Moldova didn’t vote.

The “yes” vote was up from 185 last year and 184 in 2021, and it tied the 2019 vote of 187.

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez urged the assembly before the vote to support “reason and justice,” the U.N. Charter and international law and back the resolution.

He said the U.S. embargo has imposed “the most cruel and long-lasting unilateral coercive measures that have ever been applied against any country” and that it constitutes “a crime of genocide” and an “ act of economic warfare during times of peace.”

The American aim, Rodriguez said, is to weaken Cuba’s economic life, leave its people hungry and desperate, and overthrow the government.

General Assembly resolutions are not legally binding and are unenforceable, but they reflect world opinion, and the vote has given Cuba an annual stage to demonstrate the isolation of the U.S. in its decades-old efforts to isolate the Caribbean nation.

The embargo was imposed in 1960 following the revolution led by Fidel Castro and the nationalization of properties belonging to U.S. citizens and corporations. Two years later it was strengthened.

Then-Cuban President Raul Castro and President Barack Obama officially restored relations in July 2016, and that year the U.S. abstained on the resolution calling for an end to the embargo for the first time. But Obama’s successor, , sharply criticized Cuba’s human rights record, and in 2017 the U.S. again voted against the resolution.

Rodriguez said new sanctions were added in the waning days of the Trump administration and he accused the Biden administration of strengthening measures “to harass Cuba in the economic and financial sectors.”

Cuba is in the throes of what some experts have called its gravest economic crisis since the 1959 Cuban Revolution. While increased imports of a range of goods would be welcome on the island, the Cuban government is widely thought to lack the funds to pay.

But Cuba is also going through a transformation process, with the opening of small and medium-sized private companies. Since small ventures became legal in September 2021, more than 8,000 companies have been launched in Cuba.

Rodriguez said no other people have faced “such systematic and long-lasting hostility from a superpower, but Cuba will continue to renew itself, and to build a sovereign, independent, socialist, democratic, prosperous and sustainable nation.”

U.S. deputy ambassador Paul Folmsbee told the assembly after the vote that the United States stands by its sanctions, which are “one set of tools in our broader effort toward Cuba to advance democracy and promote respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms.”

He said approximately 1,000 political prisoners remain behind bars in Cuba, more than at any point in its recent history. Nearly 700 were detained after historic protests on July 11, 2021 when civil society representatives including human rights defenders and minors exercised their right to freedom of expression and to peaceful assembly.

“We share the Cuban people’s dream of democracy in Cuba and join international partners in calling for the Cuban government to immediately release all those unjustly detained,” Folmsbee said. He urged Cuba to respond to requests from the U.N. Human Rights Council to send experts to the country to investigate its adherence to rights including freedom of expression, religion and peaceful assembly.

There was sporadic booing in the assembly chamber when he concluded by saying the General Assembly should urge the Cuban government “to adhere to its human rights obligations and listen to the Cuban people and their aspirations to determine their own future.”

'Despicable': Outgoing Trump Administration to Designate Cuba a 'State Sponsor of Terrorism'

"Cuba has been sending doctors around the world to combat Covid-19," one observer pointed out, while another said the "Trump administration should add itself as a state sponsor of terrorism."

by Kenny Stancil, staff writer
Published on Monday, January 11, 2021
by Common Dreams





8 Comments

Doctors and nurses of Cuba's Henry Reeve International Medical Brigade take part in a farewell ceremony before traveling to Andorra to help in the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic, at the Central Unit of Medical Cooperation in Havana, on March 28, 2020. (Photo: Yamil Lage/AFP via Getty Images)


Cuban and American officials as well as progressives in various parts of the world on Monday blasted the soon-to-be-departed Trump administration's decision to put Cuba back on the U.S. State Department's list of "State Sponsors of Terrorism," a move that critics say reveals the U.S. government's hypocritical approach to the topic of "terrorism."

"As the case of Cuba reveals, 'terrorism' means resistance to massive U.S. terrorism and refusal to bow down to the master."
—Noam Chomsky, linguist and activist

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's last-minute announcement, which reverses an Obama-era effort to improve diplomatic relations with the neighboring island nation, comes just before President-elect Joe Biden takes office on January 20.

On its way out the door, the Trump administration is "laying political land mines" for Biden—not only in Cuba but also in Yemen and Taiwan—wrote Robbie Gramer and Jack Detsch in Foreign Policy on Monday.

"The decision is a part of a blitz of 11th-hour moves by the Trump administration to push through hard-line policies championed by influential domestic political constituencies despite the complications they create for State Department lawyers, humanitarian interests abroad, and the incoming Biden administration," The Washington Post reported Monday.

Gramer and Detsch, however, suggested that the Trump administration is carrying out these actions not despite the harm they will cause the Biden administration but rather because the changes will constrain the incoming White House.

Cuba joins Iran, North Korea, and Syria on the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism, a list that critics say conspicuously leaves out "U.S. allies that actually do sponsor terrorist groups: Saudi Arabia and Pakistan."

The U.S. first added Cuba to its list of terrorism-sponsoring states in 1982 even as the Reagan administration provided financial support and arms to Nicaragua's right-wing counterrevolutionary forces accused of widespread human rights violations.

The State Department removed Cuba from its blacklist in 2015, part of what the New York Times called former President Barack Obama's "normalization of relations between Washington and Havana."

In his statement attempting to justify the State Department's re-designation of Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism, Pompeo accused Cuba of "repeatedly providing support for acts of international terrorism in granting safe harbor to terrorists."

As The Guardian reported, "That is partly a reference to the former Black Panther Assata Shakur who was jailed in the U.S. for the 1973 killing of a police officer and later escaped to Cuba where she was granted asylum by its then-leader Fidel Castro. It is also based on Cuba's refusal to extradite a group of guerrillas from Colombia's National Liberation Army (ELN) for alleged involvement in a 2019 bomb attack in Bogotá," as well as the nation's ongoing support for Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who survived a failed U.S.-backed coup attempt in 2019.

Last week's attempted coup on U.S. soil, wherein an insurrectionary pro-Trump mob killed a police officer during a violent attack on the Capitol following weeks of lies from the president and Republican lawmakers about the legitimacy of the presidential election outcome, was also at the forefront of critics' minds on Monday.

"This designation of Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism with less than a week to go in his presidency and after he incited a domestic terror attack on the U.S. Capitol... that's hypocrisy," Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.) told The Associated Press in an interview.

Trump administration should add itself as a state sponsor of terrorism https://t.co/yu03yamCKE
— Wajahat Ali (@WajahatAli) January 11, 2021

As journalist Reese Erlich explained in a column late last week:

In reality, Cuba has never been a state sponsor of terrorism. It supported armed insurgents in Latin America and sent troops to Angola to beat back a South African invasion of that country. But it never supported intentional attacks on civilians practiced by such groups as Al Qaeda.

Cuba's Minister of Foreign Affairs Bruno Rodríguez denounced Pompeo's announcement, calling it "hypocritical" and "cynical" for the U.S. to put Cuba on its list of terrorist-sponsoring states. "U.S. political opportunism," Rodríguez added, "is recognized by those who are honestly concerned about the scourge of terrorism and its victims."

According to journalist Dan Cohen, "the U.S. sponsored and protected right-wing fanatics who used actual terrorism to destroy the Cuban economy while Cuba has aided liberation movements around the world and sought peace."

Trump administration will name Cuba a "state sponsor of terrorism".
The US sponsored and protected right-wing fanatics who used actual terrorism to destroy the Cuban economy while Cuba has aided liberation movements around the world and sought peace.https://t.co/cgao2eJMQJ

— Dan Cohen (@dancohen3000) January 11, 2021

Erlich provided a brief snapshot of how the U.S. has weaponized the concept of "terrorism":

According to the State Department, "Terrorism means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience."

By that definition, the people who blew up the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983 were terrorists. Although the group attacked soldiers in a conflict zone, the marines were "noncombatant targets," not soldiers fighting in the field.

By contrast, the 2019 U.S. military drone strike that killed Iranian General Qasem Soleimani and Iraq militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis was not terrorism because it was carried out openly, not by "clandestine agents."

How convenient! Insurgent groups can only kill soldiers in the battlefield, whereas the Pentagon can create battlefields anywhere in the world so long as it assassinates people openly.

The State Department uses gobbledygook to lump together Al Qaeda, ISIS, Marxist guerrillas, and Palestinians who are engaged in armed struggle. Its "terror list" has always reflected Washington's drive for hegemony rather than a fight against terrorism.

In recent months, Cuba has been sending doctors around the world to tackle the coronavirus pandemic. Despite being burdened for decades by harmful economic sanctions imposed by the U.S., the biggest export of the small island nation, which has a lower child mortality rate than its more powerful and hostile neighbor to the north, is medical care.

While Cuba has been sending doctors around the world to combat COVID, @SecPompeo is about to designate Cuba a state sponsor of terrorism. Despicable. #CubaNobel#CubaSavesLives#WorstSecretaryofStatehttps://t.co/xJDLce2UqB
— Medea Benjamin (@medeabenjamin) January 11, 2021

In addition to drawing attention to the fact that the U.S. has run a "gulag" in Guantánamo Bay Naval Station in Cuba for nearly two decades, CodePink's Medea Benjamin juxtaposed Cuba's international medical brigades with U.S. support for the Saudi regime's starvation-inducing blockades and deadly airstrikes on Yemen and asked, "Who is the state sponsor of terrorism?"

Disgusting hypocrits. Cuba is saving lives around the world with its medical missions. The US is killing and starving people with bombs, like in Yemen. Who is the state sponsor of terrorism? https://t.co/rTclawsN6w
— Medea Benjamin (@medeabenjamin) January 11, 2021

Paul Pillar, a retired 28-year veteran of the CIA and former deputy chief of the agency's Counterterrorism Center, told Erlich that the State Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism has been highly politicized since Congress created it in 1979 and included only countries aligned with the Soviet Union.

"The U.S. won't put allies on the list even though they engage in terrorist behavior," Pillar said, citing the example of Saudi Arabia's murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Instead, experts say, the U.S. uses the blacklist as a coercive tool to reward compliant countries and punish noncompliant ones or entice them to bend to the will of Washington.

Decrying the hypocrisy of the list, renowned linguist and activist Noam Chomsky told Erlich by email that the U.S. should "either eliminate it, or make it honest."

"As the case of Cuba reveals, 'terrorism' means resistance to massive U.S. terrorism and refusal to bow down to the master," Chomsky said.
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Cuba's Homegrown Covid-19 Vaccines Poised to Protect Millions in Poor Nations

As rich countries hoard doses and Big Pharma refuses to share the knowledge required to ramp up manufacturing, Cuba's public biotech sector could play a key role in defeating vaccine apartheid.


A nurse vaccinates an elderly woman against Covid-19 with Cuban vaccine Abdala in Havana on August 2, 2021.

 (Photo: Yamil Lage/AFP via Getty Images)

KENNY STANCIL

COMMONDREAMS

November 24, 2021

Despite the added challenges created by a six decade-long U.S. blockade, Cuba's public biotech sector has developed two highly effective vaccines and its universal healthcare system has inoculated four-fifths of its population.

Additionally, the island has begun exporting its homegrown doses and is on the verge of sharing its recipes with impoverished nations abandoned by Big Pharma and wealthy countries.

"Cuba knew it would be hard to obtain Covid vaccines, so it made its own... and they could be key to vaccinating the world."

"Cuba is now one of the few lower-income countries to have not only vaccinated a majority of its population," Jacobin's Branko Marcetic wrote Tuesday, "but the only one to have done so with a vaccine it developed on its own."

According to Our World in Data, Cuba has fully vaccinated 80% of its population against Covid-19, putting it in the top 10 globally, and well ahead of several wealthy nations. Nearly 90% of Cubans have received at least one dose, again outpacing most of the world—even as the Biden administration has intensified Washington's embargo on the island, stifling its economy and depriving its residents of food and medical supplies, including syringes.

"Cuba," wrote Marcetic, "has been able to do the unthinkable, developing its own vaccine and outdoing much of the developed world in overcoming the pandemic, despite its size and level of wealth, and despite a policy of concerted economic strangulation from a hostile government off its shores."

He added that "international solidarity efforts have been vital, too. When the U.S. blockade meant a shortage of syringes on the island, jeopardizing its vaccination campaign, solidarity groups from the United States alone sent 6 million syringes to Cuba, with the Mexican government sending 800,000 more, and more than 100,000 on top of that coming from Cubans in China."

Since a late-August peak of nearly 10,000 cases and almost 100 deaths per day, Cuba's successful vaccination effort has coincided with a major decline in coronavirus infections and mortality. While Covid-19 has claimed the lives of 8,295 Cubans since the pandemic began, the country recorded zero deaths from the disease on Tuesday.

Moreover, "the country reopened its borders on November 15 to tourism, roughly a tenth of its economy, and has reopened schools," Marcetic noted. "This makes Cuba an outlier among low-income countries, which have vaccinated only 2.8% of their combined populations."

The glaring gap in vaccination rates between rich and poor countries is the result of vaccine hoarding by wealthy governments—which have gobbled up most of the world's doses, occasionally wasting excess supplies even as they tout their insufficient donations—and pharmaceutical corporations' refusal to share vaccine formulas, even though the underlying technology is publicly funded.

While health justice advocates continue to push for a temporary suspension of deadly intellectual property barriers at the World Trade Organization—a widely supported move that would enable qualified manufacturers to produce generic Covid-19 vaccines, treatments, and tests—Big Pharma has lobbied to maintain its extremely profitable monopoly control over lifesaving knowledge, and the industry continues to be backed by the United Kingdom, Germany, and a few other opponents of the patent waiver.

As that struggle continues ahead of the WTO's biannual Ministerial Conference that begins on November 30, Marcetic argued that Cuba's domestic vaccine production "suggests a path forward for the developing world as it continues struggling with the pandemic in the face of ongoing corporate-driven vaccine apartheid, and points more broadly to what's possible when medical science is decoupled from private profit."

Marcetic attributed Cuba's successful inoculation drive to the country's "decision to develop its own vaccines, two of which—Abdala, named for a poem penned by an independence hero, and Soberana 02, Spanish for 'sovereign'—were finally given official regulatory approval in July and August."

He continued:

In the words of Vicente Vérez Bencomo, the internationally acclaimed head of the country's Finlay Vaccine Institute, the country was "betting it safe" by waiting longer to manufacture its own vaccines. This way, it would avoid dependence on bigger allies like Russia and China while adding a new commercial export at a time of ongoing economic hardship.

These efforts are already underway. Vietnam, with only 39% of its population fully vaccinated, inked a deal to buy 5 million vaccine doses, with Cuba recently shipping more than 1 million of them to its communist ally, 150,000 of which were donated. Venezuela (32% fully vaccinated) also agreed to buy $12 million worth of the three-dose vaccine and has already started administering it, while Iran (51%) and Nigeria (1.6%) have agreed to partner with the country to develop their own homegrown vaccines. Syria (4.2%) has recently discussed with Cuban officials the prospect of doing the same.

The two vaccines are part of a suite of five Covid vaccines Cuba is developing. That includes a vaccine delivered nasally that's progressed to Phase II of clinical studies, one of only five vaccines in the entire world that have a nasal application, according to one of its top scientists, that could be particularly useful if proven to be safe and effective, given the virus's entry through the nasal cavity. It also includes a booster shot specially designed to work for those already inoculated with other vaccines, and which was recently trialed on Italian tourists. Since September, Cuba's been in the process of getting World Health Organization approval for its vaccines, which would open the door to its widespread adoption.

Unlike the mRNA vaccines produced by Pfizer and Moderna, Cuba opted to develop a more traditional vaccine, as Nature explained Tuesday:

In developing Soberana 02, Vérez Bencomo's group drew on its existing "conjugate" vaccine technology. Finlay's conjugate vaccines take a protein or a sugar from a bacterium or virus and chemically link it to a harmless fragment of a neurotoxin protein from the tetanus bacterium... Conjugate vaccines against meningitis and typhoid are used around the world, and Cuba has been immunizing children with a vaccine of this type for years.

[...]

[The Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology's] Abdala vaccine is also making major strides. As with Soberana 02, the technology behind it is adapted from an existing vaccine—one for hepatitis B—that Cuba developed and has used for many years.

Protein-based vaccines like Soberana 02 and Abdala come with multiple advantages.

For one thing, Marcetic wrote, they "can be kept in a fridge or even at room temperature, as opposed to the subpolar temperatures the Pfizer vaccine has to be stored at or the freezer temperatures Moderna's vaccine requires," making distribution easier, especially in developing countries and remote areas.

"Cuba has decommodified a vital human resource—the exact opposite policy direction that we've seen in these last four decades of neoliberalism."

Alluding to other vaccines' extreme cold storage requirements, Helen Yaffe, senior lecturer in economic and social history at the University of Glasgow, told Marcetic that "in the Global South, where huge amounts of the population have no access to electricity, it's just another technological obstacle."

Moreover, because Cuba has relied on conjugate vaccines for years to protect people, including children, from meningitis and typhoid, Bencomo told Nature he is confident that Soberana 02—which has been used to inoculate nearly two million Cuban children so far—is safe across age groups.

As Marcetic noted, "the mRNA technology, which has never been used on kids before, has meant a lag between adult and child vaccination in the developed world—and means vaccines for kids under five are still being developed."

Cuba, by contrast, "aimed from the outset to create a vaccine that kids could take," he added. "As of this month, it's fully vaccinated more than four-fifths of all kids aged two to eighteen."

Arguably the most important aspect of Cuba's vaccines, proponents say, is that their development demonstrates the existence of an alternative model for scientific research that puts people over profits.

"The Cuban vaccine," Yaffe told Marcetic, "is 100% entirely a product of a public biotech sector."

Marcetic explained:

While in the United States and other developed countries, lifesaving medicines are developed thanks largely to public funding before their profits and distribution are ruthlessly privatized for corporate enrichment, Cuba's biotech sector is wholly publicly owned and funded. That means Cuba has decommodified a vital human resource—the exact opposite policy direction that we've seen in these last four decades of neoliberalism.

Cuba has poured billions of dollars into creating a domestic biotech industry since the 1980s, when a combination of an outbreak of dengue fever and new economic sanctions from then-president Ronald Reagan forced its hand. Despite a crushing blockade by the United States, responsible for a third of the world's pharmaceutical production, Cuba's biotech sector has thrived: it makes nearly 70% of the roughly eight hundred medicines that Cubans consume and eight of the eleven vaccines in the country's national immunization program, and it exports hundreds of millions of vaccines a year. The revenues are then reinvested into the sector.

Journalist Paris Marx marveled at Cuba's recent accomplishment. "Under U.S. embargo for 60 years," they tweeted, "Cuba knew it would be hard to obtain Covid vaccines, so it made its own... and they could be key to vaccinating the world."

"The Cuban vaccine is 100% entirely a product of a public biotech sector."

"Being in Canada, it's such a stark contrast," Marx added. "Canada hasn't even manufactured Covid vaccines, let alone developed them, after privatizing the public pharma company. Meanwhile, Cuba is not only measuring up to the top global pharma giants, it's producing vaccines for export."

Marcetic wrote that "while Cuba's rebound from the pandemic suggests [Bencomo's] and the Cuban government's confidence in the vaccines isn't misplaced, it may take some more time for them to get the international scientific community's official imprimatur."

"Should it come," he continued, "it would prove a powerful refutation of the corporate-driven vaccine model that has so far dominated, which holds that, in line with the talking points of Big Pharma, only profit-driven competition can produce the kind of lifesaving innovation the world is desperate for."

Ongoing opposition to the WTO patent waiver threatens to prolong vaccine apartheid and with it, the Covid-19 pandemic—potentially endangering everyone should a vaccine-resistant variant emerge, as epidemiologists have repeatedly warned is a growing possibility.

In light of that, Marcetic added, "we should all hope that Cuba's vaccines are proven as successful as its scientists are sure they are."

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